


Silent Protectors

by LananiA3O



Series: Batfam Week - Arkham-verse [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Batman: Arkham (Video Games)
Genre: Arkham Knight Spoilers, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Swearing, post arkham knight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-11-13 01:05:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11173803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LananiA3O/pseuds/LananiA3O
Summary: In the wake of Batman’s unmasking, Barbara finds herself thinking about what ‘family’ really means to her... and what she will be willing to do to protect it.





	Silent Protectors

**Author's Note:**

  * For [girlgamer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlgamer/gifts).



> First entry for Batfam Week. Day 1 theme: family.  
> This story is set on the night of Batman Arkham Knight, Halloween 2015 and is told from the POV of Barbara Gordon. Please mind the tags. Enjoy!  
> Gifted to girlgamer, who has been reviewing my series since the very first story. Thank you for your long-lasting support :)

Merriam-Webster had eight different definitions for the word ‘family’. Fourteen if counting differing sub-divisions of the same broad concept.

Barbara was not sure what insulted her more: the fact that the most important, most relevant one, was only the fifth on the list, or the fact that the sentence that was most appropriate to her own situation was little more than an afterthought, appearing to have been tucked in by someone who read through the definition as it was and went ‘oh crap – SJWs are going to sue the skin off our hides if we don’t amend this paragraph a little’.

For Barbara, ‘family’ had started with her dad. _And mom_ , she supposed, although her mother had always seemed to favor Jim Beam over Jim Gordon and Barbara had sensed that something was wrong between her parents as early as age three, even if she had not had the mental faculties to fully comprehend the issue back then.

 _Merriam-Webster, ‘family’, definition 5 a: the basic unit in society traditionally consisting of two parents rearing their children._ also _: any of various social units differing from but regarded as equivalent to the traditional family._

The traditional family could kiss Barbara’s butt cheeks. She had done ‘traditional’ once. It had ended at age ten, with her mom insisting on driving her home from school, even when each and every single one of Barb’s teachers had protested. If Barbara recalled correctly, her mom had punched one of them in her drunken stupor, before yanking her from the relatively safe haven of the school, tucking her into the passenger seat of the car while cursing like a drunk sailor – and, hey, at least one of those she had gotten right – at the seat belt that just would not fit in the fucking buckle. Her mother had eventually given up, gotten in the driver’s seat, and sped off down the streets of Bleake Island at speeds that made the Wild Bunny ride at the Six Flags near Blüdhaven look downright cute. If Barbara had not been smart enough to secure her own belt, the resulting crash would have flung her straight through the windshield and head first into the rocky walls near Panessa. Instead, it had ended with the car upside down and folded like an accordion in the canal, with both of them bleeding and in pain. By the time the firefighters had managed to pull her out of the car, Barb’s eyes had been stinging, red, and dry after all the crying.

That was the day her father had filed for a divorce and full custody, and you _know_ that you had messed up really badly, if it was the year 2000 and you were a mother who lost everything but visitation rights to a man who worked odd shifts, long shifts, nightshifts, any shift really, in a job that was likely to get him killed before the year was over.

In the end, her mother had missed most of the visitation opportunities, mostly because she had been flat-out drunk. ‘Sporadic’ was too frequent a word to describe the contact she had had with her ex-husband and her daughter. When she had died two years later – binge-drinking sanitizer because the rehab clinic will not let you have proper alcohol could do that to a person – neither Barbara nor Jim had been truly surprised. And if she was being honest, in spite of how cruel it sometimes made her sound and feel, she was not sad either. Her memories of her mother were vague and diffuse.

And who needed two parents, when you could have one _really_ awesome parent and two handfuls of really awesome aunts and uncles?

At the sound of loud cheering, Barbara took a break from her typing – it would take all night to restore as much server data as she could, anyway, so why not clock out for a few seconds – to survey her surroundings, and despite her best efforts, she felt a chill creep up her spine.

It was Aaron who came through the elevator first. Tall, intimidating and utterly unflinching in the face of the madness around him, as usual. His latest ‘gift’ from Batman was the exact opposite of Cash: small, scared out of his wits, and writhing and muttering in paranoia as if all the bats in hell were after him. If he hadn’t tried to douse the city in fear gas and kill both her dad and Bruce, if the hadn’t tried to push her off a roof, Barb might even have felt the slightest bit of sympathy.

_Now, the terror I can elicit with a concentrated dose, administered directly into the bloodstream, that is… beautiful to witness. The long-term damage is more severe, of course._

As things stood, Barbara studied the whimpering mess that was left of the man whose voice was still echoing through her skull, crawling just underneath her skin, as he was dragged towards the holding cells for all the other psychos. Azrael, Blackfyre, Firefly, Penguin, Pyg, Riddler, Two-Face... Scarecrow had promised all of them easy pickings tonight and had taken Penguin and Two-Face for every penny in their pockets. It would be a miracle if he survived the night.

Strangely enough, Barbara felt she would not be sorry if he did not.

“You okay, Barb?” She watched Aaron Cash crouch down to her right, as he usually did when he wanted to be at eye level with her. It usually meant that he was worried. “I’m sorry we have to put him in here, in the same room as you, but all the other cells are full. Batman’s been cleaning house tonight.”

“And he is not done, I guess,” Barbara replied with a slight grin that was quickly mirrored by Aaron.

“No, he ain’t. Said he was going to go out and finish dismantling the militia. Deathstroke’s still out there, too.”

 _The four new towers that had popped up_. Barbara had seen them on the Batcomputer’s real-time analysis and had dutifully sent the intel to Bruce, together with her scathing blame for locking Tim up at Panessa’s. She was not sorry. If she was being brutally honest, she was not sure she ever would be.

“Hey, Barb...” It was the light brush of Aaron’s hand against her upper arm that broke her out of her train of thought. “I really mean it. If any of them bastards creep you out or make you uncomfortable, if one of them even so much as looks at you wrong, let me know, and I’ll go deal with it myself, okay?”

“Thanks, Aaron.” Now, this... this she truly meant. Her gaze followed him back to the front desk – almost certainly for another call with the mayor, who now wanted Bruce Wayne’s head on a silver platter for twelve years of property damage, unlawful arrests, and multiple assaults against GCPD itself. Of course, he conveniently and possibly deliberately ignored the fact that Bruce Wayne had started funding the GCPD as if there was no tomorrow over the last three years, and that all his ‘assaulted’ cops had been dirty, corrupt rats to begin with.

Not anymore, though. Her father had seen to that, even if it had taken him years.

Barbara still remembered the old days at GCPD. After the first three times she had broken out of their home, then skipped down to the library to spend all day with her head in a book, her dad had finally relented and taken her with him to work. He had gone to great pains to tell her all about how awful and gritty and gory and dangerous police work was, and that he did not want her to even think about joining the GCPD.

Of course, that had only bolstered her resolve to wear blue herself as soon as she could, if only to show to her father that Gotham needed every single good cop it could get, because ninety percent of the bunch currently employed (particularly Branden and his guys in SWAT) were taking grease from the bad guys.

The other ten percent, though... Denning, Miller, Taylor, Forrester and Sanchez... as well as most of the new blood that had joined GCPD over the last few years – Cash, Hanrahan, Groyzek, Westcott – they were her family, too. They had talked and played with her when she was wandering through the archives while her dad was on patrol. They had given her sneak peaks into areas that were usually off-limits, such as the evidence and server rooms. They had brought her newspapers, magazines, and books whenever she had been stuck in her father’s office, waiting for him to ‘just finish that last interrogation before we go home’. They had even let her bring in her laptop, and, boy, had she made good use of that. She almost felt guilty about all the times she had wiped evidence about Batman – and later Robin – off their servers. Almost. And now, they were still protecting her, keeping her safe from the wolves currently locked up in the over-flowing cells, ready to neutralize anyone that would even try to touch her.

Yes, these people were family to her, even if they were not related to her by blood, even if they were not living under the same roof as she was. GCPD was as much her home as her own apartment, her dad’s apartment, Dick’s apartment, and Wayne Manor; Bruce, Tim, Dick, Alfred, and Lucius were family to her just as much as the GCPD and her dad, and Merriam-Webster could go to hell with its narrow-minded interpretation.

She was just about to get back to work when a phone rang loudly. Just two rings in, Aaron was next to her once more, holding a phone in front of her face. “I think you might want to take this one first.”

She took the call with a deep sigh and a quick hello, only to be greeted by an exhausted huff.

“Hey princess.”

 “Dad!” He sounded worn and tired and Barb could not even blame him. Instead, she decided to get the basics out of the way first. “Where are you? Are you okay? Is Robin with you?”

“I’m fine, Barbara,” her dad answered softly and she could hear the slight smile even despite the admittedly less than stellar connection. The number had not been of his own phone and there was lots of noise in the background. “I’m at St. Roch’s.” That explained the hurried steps and quick talking in the background. “Robin’s in surgery. Docs say he’ll make it, so don’t worry.”

 _Dad is okay. Tim is okay._ She repeated the words over and over in her head. Her dad was alright. Her boyfriend was going to be alright, even if he was not right now. They would be fine. The relief that washed over her was bordering on surreal.

“So don’t worry. You’ll get your boyfriend back alive and in one piece.”

She could not help but wince at that. Now that her dad knew that Bruce Wayne was Batman, and in light of the fact that he had met Tim in person multiple times, it would have been highly unlikely for her dad of all people not to recognize the person under the domino mask.

“Cat’s pretty much out of the bag, isn’t it?” Dread settled in her gut at the long pause that followed. Silence usually meant that people knew something. Something important. Something incriminating. Something that they did not want to share unless held at gun point or threatened with jail. There was only one thing she could think of that might have had that effect on her dad. Only one thing that could have explained why he had – by Aaron’s account – run off without Batman and fallen off comms: he knew about Oracle.

 _Alright..._ Barbara steeled herself as she cracked her knuckles. She had been through this scenario in her head a thousand times, ever since she had first aided Bruce in his investigations in December 2005. She had all her arguments ready, the entire speech. _I can do this._

“So... I’m guessing this is the part where you tell me off for working with Bruce...”

_Cue protective father bit in one... two—_

“No. I am proud of you, Barbara.”

 _Wait, what?_ She could practically feel her brain grind to a halt. She must have misheard him or something like that.

“I love you and I am very proud of you, Barbara.”

“Uhm... okay...” Her cheeks felt like industrial strength heating pads on her jawbones, while her mind ran through the thousands of possible explanations. Maybe he had hit his head. Maybe he had been given some kind of loopy sedative or pain killer by the EMTs. Maybe this was not her dad, but some weird shape-shifting mutant from another planet, or some kind of highly advanced espionage robot. Maybe he was just really competently lying to her face.

 _Scratch the last one_ , Barb thought sourly. Her dad did not lie. It was part of his unwavering belief in the good in the world, part of his unbendable moral code. If there was one person who could give Bruce a run for his money in the ‘by the book and if it kills me’ department, it was her dad.

“Listen, Robin just got out of surgery.” If she was not entirely mistaken, she could hear the gurney being wheeled down the hallway behind him. “I’ll stay here and keep him company until he comes around. Tell Cash I’ll get back to the precinct later.”

“Tell him yourself,” Barbara answered over a slight chuckle. She had only noticed him out of the corner of her eye at first, but by now Aaron had approached close enough for her to know that private conversation time was over. “Looks like he wants to talk to you.” She handed the phone over silently and sat back to listen.

“Jim! Great to hear from you! You and Robin okay?” A few seconds passed, then Aaron glanced at the cell with all the so-called super criminals. “Together with the other nut jobs. Batman dropped him off a minute ago, said he was gonna go clean up the rest. Now we’re only missing two: Deathstroke and the Arkham Knight.”

Another long pause followed and Barbara could tell just from reading Aaron’s face that it was not because her father was spinning a yarn. As a matter of fact, more likely than not, he was not making a sound right now. After a little less than a minute, Aaron’s patience finally ran dry.

“Jim, are you still there? ... I was just wondering... We know Deathstroke took over the militia and he’ll probably show up once Batman finishes dismantling what’s left of it, but no one’s seen or heard anything of the Arkham Knight since the Cloudburst went off. You wouldn’t happen to have learned anything while Scarecrow had you?”

The answer to that was ‘no’, apparently. She watched as Aaron told her dad to take care and get some rest, and handed the phone back with a quick smile.

“So, no sign from the Knight, huh?”

 _No sign from Jason_. The lost sheep of the family. The black sheep was what the media had always painted him as, but that was hardly the truth. Jason had always been _dark_ , a product of an incredibly harsh, traumatizing childhood, but he had also been full of empathy and equipped with a much better understanding of the true value of the concepts of love, home, and family than any of the vultures that had slandered him. The Arkham Knight was what the world had seen tonight, but it had not been the Arkham Knight who had saved her from getting injected with fear gas by Crane. It had not been the Knight who had inquired about her well-being, before explaining the dire state of her situation, leading into the dire state of his own situation, and ultimately culminating in him baring his face, his mind, his very _heart_ to her, practically begging her to understand him, to tell him that he was not crazy, that there was meaning and justice to what he was doing.

It was the one thing she had not been able to give to him, no matter how much it had pained her to see him like that. All she had been able to give was empathy, compassion, and the offer to help. It had been too little and too much at the same time and it had sent Jason’s temper straight from seething fury into heartbreaking misery, extremes that had been tearing him apart piece by piece. It had been classic Jason, giving three-hundred percent and then some, even at the cost of his own sanity.

 _The Arkham Knight. Jason Todd. My poor baby brother_.

“Barb, are you still there?”

“Yes.” She shook her head to clear out those unhelpful thoughts. She could deal with it later. After the phone call. “Yes, I’m still here.”

“You are probably the only person who will not think that this sounds completely crazy, but he saved us at the Asylum. The Arkham Knight, I mean. He shot the gun out of Crane’s hand and shot Batman’s restraints to free him.”

“Inexplicable heel-face turn in the fifth act…” Barbara mused jokingly. “Very extra. Someone is going to write a book about tonight, aren’t they?”

“Probably.” Her dad did not sound convinced. Barb’s nagging suspicions were confirmed just a second later. “We’ll talk about it later. Stay safe, Barbara.”

The uncompromising tone made her flinch. Her dad knew more than he was letting on and he was all but telling her that he knew she did, too. This was going to be a very, very uncomfortable conversation. Later.

 _Later,_ the strictly rational part of her emphasized once more. _For now, there is still work to do_.

“You, too, dad. I love you.”

***

The next visitor to GCPD was Bruce, now back in full suit and gear including the cowl and a utility belt he had probably gotten from one of the backup caches or the trunk of the Batmobile. She wasn’t surprised to see him heading straight for her. After all, she had just taken over GCPD’s network of ongoing crime scene information. She had expected the bluntness and the lack of small talk.

What she had not expected was legitimate concern.

“Tim and your father are safe. They are being taken back to the mainland as we speak.”

Barbara had to blink once before answering that. Had Bruce really just... put someone’s emotional well-being over the mission? That happened about... what? Once in a blue moon or so? “I spoke to them a moment ago, Thanks Bruce.” Somehow, that felt good. No more hiding, no more careful whispering of field names. The cat was out of the bag. More than one cat actually, if she thought about it. “It's funny. I was waiting for Dad to do his protective father bit. I had it all ready in my head what I was gonna say. But he didn't go there, He just told me he loved me and that he was proud. Maybe he hit his head.”

“Maybe he is starting to see you.” Bruce replied. He gave a small pause, almost as if he was mulling the decision to continue talking over in his head, trying to find the right words, before finally settling on: “The real you.”

 _The real you..._ Barbara let those words float around her skull for a bit. Not Barbara Gordon, the Commissioner’s daughter, the little girl who had had the misfortune of growing up in one of the most dangerous cities in the country, with a father whose mere status in society made her an acceptable target for every piece of scum in this city and had ultimately led to her being disabled for life. Not Barbara Gordon, but _Oracle_ , the woman who had once been Batgirl, a genius who was so good at all her tech stuff the freaking Batman asked her for support, the woman who had faced a permanently disabling shot to the spine, a kidnapping by two of the most brutal villains to ever have hit Gotham, and being tossed off a skyscraper, with enough grace and tenacity to come out of it unbent, if not unbroken.

Bruce, Batman, had seen her as such for a long time, and the harder Barbara thought about it, the more likely she considered it that he had been able to do so specifically because she was _not_ his daughter, whether by blood or by law. However, that did not mean they were not family. Bruce may not have been her father, but he was the closest thing to it. As far as Barbara was concerned, Bruce, Batman, was family.

“What are you going to do, Bruce?”

“Finish it.”

“Good.” Barbara flexed her fingers in anticipation of more work. She would give him those four new militia watch towers the Batcomputer had found on a silver platter, and she would watch with a smile on her face as he took them apart. In the meantime, she could scramble their networks, tie up loose ends, and restore downed systems. There was still a lot to do before they could all go home, reunite and get some rest. “I’m just getting warmed up.”

Bruce left and a few minutes passed. She had been just about ready to contact Alfred so they could distribute the workload when a red warning light popped up on her screen.

“Really? For crying out loud!” She kept her voice down so as not to attract any attention, but inside, Barbara was seething. This was the second time tonight that someone who was not Batman or Robin had tried to gain access into Panessa Studios, and the first time it had happened, it had been Scarecrow using her father as a tool to infiltrate the base. She was going to murder whoever—

_Identification confirmed. Jaybird._

Her insides froze into a painful ball almost instantly.

When Dick had suggested using this nickname as a code name for Robin II, because simply numbering them would only give criminals another clue as to how many there had been and who they might be, she and Bruce had accepted only because they had been sure, deep down, that they were never going to read this message. Even just typing it into the computer, programming the voice recognition system to ping them immediately, if Joker were to use Jason’s voice to gain access, had been painful. Another reminder that her little brother was gone and very likely dead.

Seeing it now did not feel any less painful, especially because Joker _was_ dead. Which meant that there was only one reasonable explanation as to who had used the system. With a deep sigh, Barb dug into the data from the gauntlet hack incident Alfred had mentioned to her earlier, while Bruce had been taking out the remaining bombs and road blocks, and traced the signal back to its source. The Arkham Knight – Jason – had hid his tracks carefully, littered with firewalls, proxies, and electronic dead ends, but they were no match for her. Jason had probably known it. There was a reason he had gone after her, rather than Lucius or Alfred. At last, the final barrier fell away. Barbara took a quick glance around the room to make sure that no one was nearby, then opened the comms link.

“You know booby-trapping your voice print was the second thing Bruce had me do after your abduction?” Her voice was little more than a hushed whisper. “Right after promising him to be extra-careful on patrol and not going after the bastard on my own.”

“Let me guess, he had you set it to ping him on his gauntlets, too?” Jason – and this was definitely Jason, even if his mask still distorted his voice into something slightly different – sounded like a beaten dog.

She thought back to the conversation they had had at Killinger’s, to the desperation in his voice, to the latest intel her dad had given her. No, this was not the Knight. This was Jason. Her baby brother.

“The direct relay was fried when the militia trashed the Clock Tower servers, but you know I can’t keep this from him. I won’t. And even if I did, Alfred has access to the Batcomputer too, you know.”

That much was true. If Bruce had not received the ping, Alfred almost certainly had. As a matter of fact, she was expecting a second call from him through the comms any second now. They hadn’t had much time to talk the first time around, but it had been enough for him to ask her two questions. _Did Bruce tell her Jason was still alive? Was it true?_ The mix of grief and hope in his voice had nearly broken her heart. She had decided to answer yes, but to postpone the revelation that Jason had been the one behind the Arkham Knight’s mask, until the night was over. Bruce may not have been her dad, but Alfred had been like a grandfather to her. To all of them, really, and he always would be. If there was one person on this wide green Earth who _deserved_ to have nothing but happiness, it was Alfred. Even Jason, despite all Joker had done to him, had been able to see that. She could only hope that it would be enough.

The silence that answered her over the slight static of the comms unit was not comforting and Barbara rubbed her temples in frustration. These goddamn bat boys and their inability to just freaking _talk_ to each other!

“Alright, I get it.” Clearly, Jason was not yet ready for any kind of civilized conversation with Bruce, but he had saved him, and he hadn’t even killed Scarecrow to do it. She could work with that. “Bruce is currently busy with two new watchtowers that popped up on Bleake. How much time do you need, Jason?”

“Barb…” _Definitely not the Knight._ Barb felt her lips curl into a little smile even as her heart ached at the memory. The first time she had heard that tone from Jason, he had been at the manor for all of ten days, fresh off the streets and clearly more than a little over-tasked with adapting to ordinary life in an ‘ordinary’ social setting that Bruce had forced him into with all the best intentions and zero understanding of the potential damage. To think that Joker had managed to reduce him back to that, after all the hard work Alfred, Dick, Barb, and even Bruce had put into helping him... “You do know how much damage I could do to the Batcomputer from here, right?”

That finally turned the sad smile into one of her old heads-you-lose/tails-I-win grins. “I know that you _won’t_. My dad just called and told me the Arkham Knight saved Batman at the Asylum, but that wasn’t the Knight, was it?”

“Putting an awful lot of trust in me here, Barb.”

She wanted to freaking murder Joker. Screw Bruce and his ‘no killing’ rule. Screw dad and ‘by the book’. Fire, brimstone, and all the plagues of Egypt would not have been enough for that pile of inhuman garbage. _Push it down, Barb._ She swallowed hard. Her brother did not need her rage. He needed her help. That was what being a big sister was all about, was it not?

“We’ve always trusted you, Jason. All of us. You’re family.” She shook her head and rubbed the oncoming fatigue out of her eyes. According to a cursory look at the clock on her PC, it was almost five in the morning, just shy of sunrise. Whatever Jason was planning to do in Panessa, he would have to do it fast, if he wanted to avoid a confrontation with Bruce. It was time she put her money where her mouth was. “How much time do you need?”

Jason seemed to ponder that question carefully. She could almost hear the gears turn behind the red mask. “Ten minutes. Tell Bruce there should be another watchtower near the militia HQ, if he’s in the mood for more curb-stomping. Four mini-gunners and two guys with optical deflection armor. His gadgets will be here by the Batcomputer.”

If she had needed any proof that he was not planning to blow the place sky-high or implement another deranged revenge plot against Batman, this was it. Nobody in their right mind would give their enemy intel like that. Certainly not anyone from their family.

“And Barb…” He sounded tired. Tired and worn and downright crushed. “I’m sorry. For everything.”

The link was cut before she could answer and Barbara buried her face in her hands, relishing the coolness of her palms against her cheeks for just a second, before setting to re-routing all Panessa data traffic through a sturdy loop of VPNs and firewalls that would ensure Bruce would not see the slightest hint of Jason’s intrusion for at least ten minutes.

If there was one decision she had made that night that she would later come to regret, it had been this one. Who knew if Bruce would have returned to the manor, had he known where Jason was?

***

She had been getting some snacks and a Soder Cola from the nearby vending machine when the news had hit. Vicki Vale’s face had been on screen all night, first in the safety of a GCN studio, then in the cold and the rain in front of what were very definitely the main gates of Wayne Manor. Barbara had been able to tune her out just fine.

Until now.

The Batwing landed with a majestic roar, the unpainted, fresh-off-the-press Batmobile pinned to its underside. There was sheer chaos – running and scrambling and pushing and shouting – as every single reporter and camera man in front of the gates scrambled to get a better look at Batman. Bruce, undeterred by the thousands of camera flashes and the noise of the crowd, walked up to the mansion as if nothing strange had happened. She could see Alfred greeting him, watch them exchange a few words that nobody caught, before Bruce entered the house and the doors closed behind him.

Two seconds later, the first explosion shook the manor. Suddenly, the air was thick and heavy with debris and smoke. Underneath the panicked screams and shouts of the terrified onlookers, several smaller explosions cracked harshly. By the time Vicki Vale and her camera man were once more zooming in on the action, the roof had collapsed, the windows shattered. Stone by stone, piece by piece, the house that had once been home to her mentor and second father, to her grandfather, to her brothers, and her boyfriend, came apart as the flames consumed it. A minute later the earth itself seemed to give way, opening up and swallowing the Batwing, the Batmobile and everything else in the immediate vicinity whole.

_This is not happening._

Her eyes saw the pictures on the screen, her ears heard the terrified shouts of the dispersing crowd, but her brain refused to register the input. This had to be a sick joke, a horrible prank by someone who wanted to mess with Batman and his allies, a ploy to demoralize those who thought to return order to Gotham.

The first one to regain his voice was Penguin. “Look at that, boys! Someone’s having themselves a bat barbeque!” His laughter echoed through the room, grating on every single surface. Underneath it, Blackfyre started quoting from the bible, Azrael started muttering on about his prophecies, Riddler cheered.

The most unsettling though was Dent, whose face had turned into two slightly different, yet equally disturbing displays of a smirk. “Tails you lose, Cash...”

In Aaron’s face, Barbara could see the same shock that had gripped everyone else in the room, every cop, every firefighter.

“It’s not true.” She could not remember the last time she had spoken anything with this much conviction. “It can’t be. This is a bad joke.”

She made her way back to the computer immediately, the soft drink and snack now forgotten on Cash’s desk. The keys rattled as she punched the numbers into GCPD’s outdated hardware, working through the Batcomputer network to establish a link back to the base.

_PING FAILED. BATCAVE COMMS HUB OFFLINE._

_PING FAILED. BATCAVE DATABASE OFFLINE._

_PING FAILED. BATCAVE BACKUP SERVER OFFLINE._

_PING FAILED. BATCAVE SURVEILLANCE NETWORK OFFLINE._

_PING FAILED. ADDITIONAL SURVEILLANCE OFFLINE._

_PING FAILED. ADDITIONAL COMMS OFFLINE._

_PING FAILED. BATWING COMMS OFFLINE._

_PING FAILED. BATWING TELEMETRY OFFLINE:_

_PING FAILED. BATMOBILE COMMS OFFLINE._

_PING FAILED. BATMOBILE TELEMTRY OFFLINE._

_PING FAILED. BATMAN COMMS OFFLINE._

_PING FAILED. BATMAN BIO-READINGS OFFLINE._

_PING FAILED. BATMAN COMMS OFFLINE._

_PING FAILED. BATMAN BIO-READINGS OFFLINE._

_PING FAILED. BATMAN COMMS OFFLINE._

_PING FAILED. BATMAN BIO-READINGS OFFLINE._

_PING FAILED. BATMAN COMMS OFFLINE._

_PING FAILED. BATMAN BIO-READINGS OFFLINE._

_PING FAILED. BATMAN COMMS OFFLINE._

_PING FAILED. BATMAN BIO-READINGS OFFLINE._

_PING FAILED. PENNY-ONE COMMS OFFLINE._

_PING FAILED. PENNY-ONE COMMS OFFLINE._

_PING FAILED. PENNY-ONE COMMS OFFLINE._

_PING FAILED. PENNY-ONE COMMS OFFLINE._

_PING FAILED. BATMAN COMMS OFFLINE._

_PING FAILED. BATMAN BIO-READINGS OFFLINE._

“No...” The red letters burned into her brain like a particularly bad horror flick. “No, no, no, no, it can’t be! It can’t!!”

Another attempt. _Fail_. Yet another attempt. _Fail_. She tried every back-up line she remembered.

“Barbara—“

“Maybe it’s our equipment,” Barb interrupted him quickly. “Cash, I told you to update and upgrade these damn machines and ask Wayne Enterprises for another donation. Seriously between these crappy old computers and the damaged Clock Tower servers, of course everything is coming back red!”

Panessa should be fine, though, at least as far as she knew. It took less than half a minute to establish the connection. Panessa was online. All systems green. With renewed determination, Barbara switched relays and sent out another batch of pings.

_PING FAILED. BATCAVE COMMS HUB OFFLINE._

_PING FAILED. BATCAVE DATABASE OFFLINE._

_PING FAILED. BATCAVE BACKUP SERVER OFFLINE._

_PING FAILED. BATCAVE SURVEILLANCE NETWORK OFFLINE._

_PING FAILED. ADDITIONAL SURVEILLANCE OFFLINE._

_PING FAILED. ADDITIONAL COMMS OFFLINE._

_PING FAILED. BATWING COMMS OFFLINE._

_PING FAILED. BATWING TELEMETRY OFFLINE:_

_PING FAILED. BATMOBILE COMMS OFFLINE._

_PING FAILED. BATMOBILE TELEMTRY OFFLINE._

_PING FAILED. BATMAN COMMS OFFLINE._

_PING FAILED. BATMAN BIO-READINGS OFFLINE._

_PING FAILED. PENNY-ONE COMMS OFFLINE._

_PING FAILED. BATMAN COMMS OFFLINE._

_PING FAILED. BATMAN BIO-READINGS OFFLINE._

“No... no, no, no, no—“

“Barbara, I’m sorry.” This time, Cash did not let her interrupt him. Instead, he pried her hands off the keyboard gently, before cupping her face with his one remaining hand. “I’m so sorry, Barb.”

This was not a joke. This was not a hoax. This was not a malfunction. The manor and the Batcave were gone. Batman and Penny One were gone. Bruce and Alfred were gone.

Maybe it was simple muscle memory, but somehow her hands still managed to hit CTRL-ALT-DEL to lock the PC before she pushed right past him, wheeling her chair out of the room and into the evidence storage that was now brimming with money, guns and various other materials that had been confiscated throughout the night. She could still see the glass where Bruce had broken a display to get one of Riddler’s dumb trophies, as well as the broken ‘Batman’ display of Arkham City goods in the distance. With every single glance she took at the collection, her stomach turned over once more, until her gaze finally came to rest on the Arkham Knight’s blue visor, now cracked and flickering with broken images.

The Arkham Knight had won. Bruce was dead.

_Bruce. Is. Dead. Alfred. Is. Dead._

With a sharp cry that was stuck somewhere between pain and grief, Barbara curled in on herself and finally let the tears flow.

***

It was Sergeant Leal-Bolea who had eventually approached her, sitting down next to her with a box of tissues in one hand and a bottle of water in the other. Exactly how long she had been sitting there, Barbara did not know.

What she did know was that by the time she stopped accepting the tissues and started accepting the water, her eyes were once again red, stinging, and dry. There were no more tears left in her. No more strength for that matter either and Barbara wanted to curse herself as she struggled to get the stupid cap back onto the stupid bottle because no matter how many times she tried, it somehow always came on crooked and—

“Oh, fuck me!” She watched the cap bounce off her legs and roll down the smooth floor with almost mocking leisure. She had half a mind to throw the bottle after it. Instead, Angela simply took the bottle from her.

“It’s okay, Barbara. I’ll get it later. It’s not your fault.”

She wanted to believe that. She really did, yet somehow the words did not make her feel even marginally better.

“We need to send a team over there,” the rational part of her brain – or what was left of it, at least – argued. “Send a team. Investigate the scene. Maybe they got out. Maybe there’s a clue!”

“Your dad is already on it,” the sergeant assured her. “He had a team sent there the minute the news broke and he insisted on going himself, but if you feel up to it, we can ask Cash for an update?”

“Yeah...” Barbara wasn’t entirely sure what she was feeling, but what she did know with a thousand percent clarity was that the walls were starting to cave in on her. She needed to get out. She needed to know. She wiped her face with the sleeve of her hoodie and took a deep breath. “Yeah, let’s go.”

They left the evidence room together, crossing the hall in quick strides – or in Barb’s case: pushes – to get to the GCPD’s comms room. One look at the faces of everyone waiting inside was enough to kill what little hope she had had.

“I’m sorry, Barb.” Cash looked as tired and saddened as he sounded. “No news so far. According to the guys on site, the place is a wreck. We’ll keep digging, but it will take at least another couple of hours.”

“That’s ok.” Somehow, her voice had leveled out into its normal tone, and Barbara was immensely grateful for that. _Put on your poker face, Batgirl._ “Just set me up somewhere away from the zoo and I’ll see what I can do to help. Whoever planted those bombs must have been planning it for a while. I can check maintenance and security back-up logs for the manor, see who went in or out over the last couple of days, monitor on-going chatter and—“

“Barb—“ Aaron was kneeling in front of her again, his good hand lying gently on her shoulder. “Barb, you can do that later. You’ve been through hell tonight. Right now, you should go home. Get some rest. Let us handle this, okay?”

“Is that an order or a request?”

She was not sure what had made her snap like that, but thankfully Aaron did not seem to mind. “It’s an order from Gordon and a request from me. Please, Barb. You don’t have to do everything by yourself.”

“Like Bruce?” Against all good judgment, a laugh suddenly wormed its way out of her throat. _Good god, I really am turning into him!_ Bruce would totally do it. Insist on soldiering on. By himself. As always. Goddamn, stubborn idiot. “Home, huh?”

Where exactly was home? ‘GCPD’ was obviously not the answer Cash was looking for. Her apartment? The Clock Tower was brimming with tech. If she went there, she would only be tempted to work some more, and no one would be there to stop her. Because right now the Clock Tower was empty, cold, and hollow. A solitary confinement with nothing but buzzing of her fridge for companionship. The thought made her skin crawl, but at the same time, it was suddenly clear what she needed to do.

“Okay. I’ll leave. But only under one condition.”

“What’s that, Barb?”

“We need to stop by St. Roch’s first.”

***

Barbara had never liked hospitals. She had shared that animosity with Jason and marveled at the utter indifference of Bruce, Dick, and Tim. She supposed it was one of those ‘first impressions matter’ kind of thing. Bruce’s dad had been a surgeon at Gotham General, so for him a trip to the hospital had usually meant a visit to daddy. Tim and Dick, the lucky bastards, had never even seen a hospital from the inside until they had started working with Batman, and by that point they had been more than old enough to look at it from a purely rational ‘I’ll be out of here in three days anyway’ perspective. Having been given private rooms and the best service all the time had probably helped, too.

For Jason, on the other hand, hospitals had been nothing but convoluted traps that reeked of sanitizers, blood, disease, and death. If she remembered correctly, he had always resented every single step along the way, from having to give his personal information, to the drugs, to the treatments, to the damn restrictions placed on him while there... The first time he had crawled out of a hospital bed straight after surgery to recover anywhere but there, Bruce had been horrified and sick with worry, even if he had gone to great lengths not show it. After the third time, he had simply put him in the manor instead and brought the doctors to him. It was easier than having to follow the blood trail of your own son onto the very unsafe streets of Gotham.

For Barbara, a trip to the hospital had usually meant either one of two things: mommy had been drinking too much again, or daddy had been shot. Neither one was a pleasant scenario, and she had eventually learned to dread the walk down these supposedly white halls, and social calls to loved ones currently in treatment had quickly become one of those chores she had always made sure to push off onto someone else. Usually Dick. Dick _loved_ looking after any of their injured flock. Of course, getting shot in the spine and having to spent several days cooped up in a hospital bed – thank god Bruce had footed the bill for that – had not helped.

As hospitals went, St. Roch’s was not too bad. It was smaller than Gotham General, and while that meant that it had fewer specialized units and doctors, it also meant that it attracted less attention, fewer reporters and paparazzi. What few surgeons there were in St. Roch’s were very competent people, as were the nurses, and from what Barb could see as she rolled along the halls with Sergeant Leal-Bolea by her side, cleanliness and equipment were up to an acceptable standard. It was a small silver-lining, but she was not going to be picky now.

They had moved him to one of the private rooms on the much quieter northern side of the building. The name tag next to the door simply read ‘Robin’, and Barbara sighed with relief. It was bad enough that Bruce had been unmasked. She did not need Tim’s identity revealed to the world as well. She gave the two cops standing guard by his door a quick nod before heading inside and closing the door firmly behind herself.

The room was quiet, except for the soft humming and beeping of the ECG he had been hooked up to. There were no tubes going into his mouth or nose, but she could see an IV connected to his left arm and a catheter. With a quick frown, Barbara picked up the chart from the foot of the bed and skimmed through the information. Two broken ribs, multiple bruises and a gunshot wound that had torn through his suit and lodged in his kidney, which had consequently been removed from his body together with the offending piece of metal.

It could have been much, much worse.

“You know...” She hung the chart back into place before moving to his side and cupping his right hand gently in both of hers. “If Bruce were here, he’d wonder why you didn’t put up more of a fight.”

“I already asked, but he’s been pretty tight-lipped so far.”

The window only made the slightest squeaking noise as it was hoisted just enough to allow Nightwing’s snake-like body to slither in. The movement looked painful, but Barbara had learned to ignore that a long time ago. Part of her was not yet convinced that his bones were not actually made of rubber. He landed with a soft thud, closed the window once more quietly, and knelt down in front of her with the brightest smile he could muster.

For a Dick Grayson smile, it was not bright at all.

“It’s so good to see you alive, Babs!”

The hug came swiftly, strong but at the same time not crushing, and Barbara let herself melt into it. Despite the rain-pelted suit, Dick was radiating warmth. More importantly, the way his hands were stroking along her back and running through her hair, Dick was radiating a sense of safety that she had not even realized she needed. It was all the signaling her brain needed to bring back the memories, the agony of seeing the manor go up in flames on screen.

“You too, Dick...” The pain came back around the same time as her arms returned the hug, even though her eyes had no more tears to give. “Bruce and Alfred...”

“I know.” Dick’s usually cheerful voice was heavy with swallowed pain. “I know, Barb.”

“We should have stopped it. We—“

“Barb. Don’t.” He loosened the hug just enough to cup her face in his hands and look her straight in the eye. Only now, up close, could she finally get a good look at him. Dick’s eyes were still red in the corners, even though the rain had long-since washed the tears away. He looked weary, tired, exhausted, but there was also a spark there that she could not quite pin-point until he flicked a quick glance at Tim. This was not Dick ‘aka Nightwing’ and not even Dick ‘aka ex-boyfriend and now best friend’. This was Dick ‘aka big brother’.

“It is not your fault, Barb. It is not mine. It is not Tim’s or Bruce’s or Alfred’s fault. It’s Scarecrow and this damn Arkham K—“

“No.” She had to stop him right there, as her brain pushed the sadness onto the back burner. “Scarecrow didn’t even know who Bruce was until just before he got arrested and the Knight...”

Her brain ground to a halt. How exactly was she going to tell Dick about this? _Oh, by the way, our baby brother Jason’s not dead. He was just lost and lonely all by himself for the last three years, in which he plotted to murder Bruce at any cost necessary?_ Yeah, that was not going to happen.

“I met him, Dick. I met the Arkham Knight, in person. If he had wanted to kill Bruce by blowing up the manor, he could and would have done it months ago without involving Scarecrow.”

Clearly, Dick was not convinced, and Barbara braced herself for the inevitable verbal fight she was about to get dragged into. “How can you be sure of that, Barb? Bastard is a complete psycho! He turned this city into a pit from hell, nearly killed you—“

“Imma kill _you_ if y’don’ shut up...”

Barb turned her head at the same time Dick did. From the bed next to them, Tim glanced at them with half-opened, heavy-lidded eyes. His lips curved into a slight smile at the sight of Dick, then fell into a frown at the sight of her.

“Nevermind... still dreamin... hallucinatin...”

“You wish!” Dick lobbed back at him. Half a second later, Tim’s frown had turned from frustration to sheer fury.

“Yeah, I do. Barb’s dead, Dick. She’s gone. Scarecrow killed her.”

 _Oh god..._ The realization turned her gut to sheer ice. Had Bruce... had he not even bothered to tell Tim that she was still alive?

“I’m not dead, Tim.” She took his hand into hers once more and pressed a light kiss to his fingers. “Scarecrow gassed Bruce. It was just a fear gas hallucination. I am right here.”

“Really?”

“Really.” She smiled at the spark of hope in his voice and tightened her grip just a little. “The last conversation we had, you complained to Bruce because he wouldn’t let you help dealing with Scarecrow and he insisted that you stay with the infected.”

For a moment, she was not entirely sure where she had stepped wrong, but his expression turned from joy to horror almost instantly. “Bruce... he’s the fifth infected, Barb! We gotta find him—“

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Thankfully, Dick was on his toes in a second, pressing his gloved hands gently against Tim’s rising shoulders. “Easy, Timbers! You just had your left kidney removed because of a bad case of bullet to the side. You’re not going anywhere any time soon.”

Tim frowned at that. “Then you go and find Bruce! Stop him before he hurts himself or—“

They had been doing their best to keep their poker faces on. Dick’s face was still a mask of worry and slight amusement, Barb was still smiling softly. However, she might have known. She might have known that nothing, not even the slightest twitch of an eye, flew underneath Tim’s radar. Not even when he had just come out of trauma- and drug-induced unconsciousness.

“Where is he, Barb?”

There was no sugar-coating this. She played with the idea of lying to him for all of five seconds. It would be easier on all of them. Easier on Dick, who had already cried his eyes dry over Bruce’s death and was now valiantly trying to take the lead. Easier on herself, also with eyes cried dry and the resolution not to panic, to be the rational one, the anchor in this mess. Easier on Tim, who had been through more than enough tonight and who needed rest.

But it was all wrong. _The easiest way is not always the right way_. It was one of her father’s favorite sayings and it stood right in line with ‘family does not lie to each other’. In the end, what good had lying to her dad about Batgirl, about Oracle, about all of it, really done for her? What good had lying to all of them – Dick, Tim, Alfred, Lucius, and Barbara herself – done to Bruce? What good would it do her to repeat his mistakes?

None.

With, new-found resolve, Barb took a deep breath and made a vow to herself right then and there. No more lying. Not to the family. Bruce had tried to do this all by himself and he had failed miserably. She was not going to repeat his mistakes. None of them should.

“Bruce returned to Alfred just before sunrise,” Barbara finally explained, her voice as calm and factual as she could muster. “The manor exploded only a few seconds later.”

It took him a moment to fully comprehend what she had said. Tim’s eyes widened in shock. “Bruce is... dead? And Alfred?”

“We can’t be sure yet. GCPD is still digging through the rubble. Probably will be for quite a while. But as things look at the moment... yes.”

In the silence that followed – and the first rays of light falling into the room as the sun finally rose high enough to make a difference despite the clouds – Barbara took stock of what was left of their flock once more. Dick had taken off his gloves and had moved from pushing Tim down to stroking one hand against Tim’s left arm and curling the other around Tim’s and Barbara’s fingers, while resting his forehead against Tim’s. Tim himself lay with his eyes closed, swallowing back what was most likely tears, sobs, and angry self-blame. Barbara could empathize. She had been there. So had Dick, quite obviously.

Barbara curled one hand tighter around Tim’s fingers and got a strong squeeze in return, and withdrew the other to put it on top of Dick’s. It almost felt like a ridiculous caricature of a child’s game, except there was nothing funny or playful about the situation. With a deep sigh, Barbara pressed a soft kiss first to Dick’s fingers, then to Tim’s. Both of them looked at her with almost equal expressions of slight anticipation and a desperate need for comfort. And despite the masks, it once again struck her how alike they all looked. _All_ of Bruce’s boys. All of her family.

“It’ll be ok, guys.” To her own surprise, part of her actually believed it. “We still have each other. We can get through this. We’ll just have to stick together and look out for each other. We can do this, ok?”

“Yeah.” Dick flashed her a quick smile, tired and sad, but with a spark of hope.

“Together,” Tim insisted, his voice heavy with painkillers and sadness, but the tiniest curve to his lips.

“Together,” Barb agreed.

_To hell with blood lines. To hell with shared roofs over heads. To hell with shared goals and affiliations._

Her dad. Tim. Dick. Jason. The GCPD. They were all her family. They had been for a long time now and would be until the day she died, and she would fight tooth and nail to keep all of them safe.

Merriam-Webster could kiss her ass.


End file.
